"Did they think I was just going to roll over and die?"

[P]eople familiar with Cohen’s thinking are confident that his value as a potential cooperating witness is undiminished. “It’s not the recording that is valuable,” one person said. “It’s the backstory.” Another person close to Cohen said that he was privy to information that could be valuable to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s attempt to interfere in the 2016 election. “When Michael says that he wants the truth out there, and that the truth is not the president’s friend, he is not talking about marginal issues. He’s talking about core issues at the heart of the Mueller probe,” this person continued. Three people familiar with the situation believe that Cohen has discussed information about the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower, during which Don Jr., Kushner, and Paul Manafort met with a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin who promised to provide them with “dirt” on Hillary Clinton. (Cohen declined to comment.)

As the newfound silence between Trump and Cohen turns into a potential cold war, Cohen has told friends that one of his biggest regrets is the embarrassment heaped upon First Lady Melania Trump. This weekend, the First Lady’s spokeswoman said that she was “focused on her role as a mother and as First Lady” and would have no further comment regarding the tapes. Cohen has said he hopes to apologize to her someday. Meanwhile, his feelings toward her husband, and towards those he believes are part of the strategy to discredit him, are chillier. “If they think for a second that the efforts to discredit me aren’t known to me, they are sadly mistaken,” he has told friends. “Did they think I was just going to roll over and die?"